Arrival in Hong Kong

By Kevin Rutherford

Following my travels to Japan, I arrived in Hong Kong on June 2, the day before my program was to begin. Due to a coincidence in timing, my first stop was to visit the Big Buddha statue with a friend from my undergraduate days. Accessible by tramway, a short bus ride, or a long hike, the statue was built in the mid-1990s and functions as a sort of tourist trap. On a good day, you should be able to see much of the harbor and surrounding area, but alas it was the rainy season, and we were clouded in.

After the statue, I made my way to the mainland and tried to find my way to the hostel I was staying at. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of getting off at the wrong subway stop in over ninety-degree heat with high humidity, so it took a bit of walking to figure out where I was headed. At least I was able to experience a bit of the city during the day, even if it was physically taxing when compared to my walks in Japan.”

That night, I made my first visits into the night life of the city. While I had previously walked through one of the main streets during the day, it was hard to appreciate what went on at night until walking around and seeing the different street vendors at one of the night markets. Many goods could be purchased there, including phone accessories, cheap handbags, and other forms of knockoffs that would cost much more in America. While I never bought a knockoff good, I found it interesting to see this whole second market appear at night, as there were few signs of it existing during the day.

The next day, brought my first full day of life in Hong Kong. The night before, I met up with Isaac, a fellow School of Public Affairs graduate student, and we walked to get some lunch in a nearby restaurant. This ended up being an experience to remember, as we realized right away that no one spoke conversational English. Instead of being able to order what we wanted, we were immediately given ginger scallion chicken and rice, along with lemon tea. While it was not a bad meal by any means, I was interested in the tea that we were given. This then turned into a comical scene where I ended up ordering fish head, only to find out from the cook, who was the only one who spoke English, that it was lemon tea that I received. Now with an extra meal in hand, I made it back to the hostel and donated it to one of the receptionists.

The next trip was to campus, which involved walking up a hill. While in theory this would mean saving money, the hill was a lot higher than we expected, and, coupled with the heat and humidity, just drenched us in sweat. Once we arrived on campus, we entered our dorms and, upon entering the elevator, my suitcase handle immediately snapped. Fortunately, that was not a harbinger of things to come.